Table of contents for Winter 2017 in Roadkill

SCHEDULE KEY: ORIGINAL PROGRAMS • RACING NEW ROADKILL EXTRA AND DIRT EVERY DAY EXTRA MONDAYS THROUGH FRIDAYS Nov. 21 Dirt Every Day Ep. 71 Nov. 22 GP Confidential, Brazil + Preview Abu Dhabi Nov. 23 HOT ROD Garage Ep. 59 Nov. 24 LIVE! Virgin Australia Supercars (Newcastle 500) Auto Mundial Motorsport Mundial Roadkill Ep. 72 Trans Am Racing Series (COTA) Nov. 27 LIVE! MOTOR TREND Awards (Los Angeles) Nov. 29 FIM Freestyle MX World Championship (Shenzhen, China) Dec. 1 Auto MundialMotorsport MundialPorsche Carrera Cup Australia (Gold Coast) Dec. 4 Engine Masters Ep. 29 Mobil 1 The Grid Dec. 5 SKUSA SuperNationals (Las Vegas) Dec. 6 FIM Freestyle MX World Championship (Sofia, Bulgaria) GP Confidential, Abu Dhabi + Post SeasonModified Ep. 7 Dec. 7 Put Up or Shut Up Ep. 7…

The chrome door handles are not plastic. They’ll burn you on a hot day and freeze you on a subzero night, but they won’t crack and break. The doors close with a thunk, like a log falling on mossy ground, not a thin metal and plastic hollow clang. The Jeep is unusual in that it doesn’t have a big suspension lift or massive tires—at least unusual for me because getting in the back bucket seats is not a climb-up but rather a sit-down affair. The dogs—who aren’t equipped with the longest legs—don’t need help to get in. The seats are worn and covered with wool blankets from thrift stores, and the carpet needs vacuuming. It has carpet. The steering wheel is as thin as a spaghetti noodle but steers so…

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY Jamison Bernier froze Greg Healey’s 1978 Datsun 280Z midleap at the 2017 New England Forest Rally in western Maine. Greg rescued the Datsun from a garage, where it had been sitting for 20 years. He sold his previous rally car—a ’99 Impreza—and bought safety gear and a cage for the 280Z. “Everybody had a Subaru,” he said. “I wanted something different.” He and co-driver Phil Barnes have since put the Z through 48 rally events. It’s still powered by a 2.8-liter inline-six, but it’s been racified with seats, belts, and a stiffer suspension with a little more ground clearance. “Even though it’s a well-built car and has some pretty good suspension, I try not to jump it much,” Greg said. “That said, it handles rough stuff…

There are landmarks you won’t find in any guidebook. Get familiar with a town, and you’ll recognize cars that tell the city’s stories better than any cut-roof bus tour. Such is the mysterious Griffith Park Camaro, a faded Tripoli Turquoise 1968 Camaro that is as regular a Los Angeles sighting as the stars on Hollywood Boulevard or waves against the Malibu sand. The car is always parked in the same spot at the top of Observatory Road in the hills above Los Feliz, California. It sits there every day, headlights toward Hollywood, wheels turned hard to the left, employee parking badge dangling from the rearview mirror. Those in the know can tell you it’s a one-owner car, a daily driver with a half-million miles on its well-spun odometer, but its…

 “If I could own an exotic car, I’d probably just sell it and buy like, 300 crappy ones,” Brock Dvorak says. He’s leaning against the back of a well-worn, black 1986 Monte Carlo SS, and he looks one mustache away from pulling off a pretty good Dale Earnhardt impersonation. Walk around to the front, and even the Intimidator might get intimidated. The hood is long gone, as are the twinning vines normally found on the front badge. The little knight’s shield is empty, as if the design came alive, turned into turbo piping, and crawled up the windshield. “I like being able to walk into a parking lot and know, without a doubt, what car is mine,” Brock says. “And I enjoy getting people worked up over things they shouldn’t…

Starting it all is the 1974 Chevy C-10 long referred to as simply the Muscle Truck, but lately we added “Original” to distinguish it from the others. This truck was around well before ROADKILL; it was built by Freiburger and Chad Reynolds in a very Roadkill 15-day thrash to make it to the GM Performance Parts LSx Shootout way back in 2008. Freiburger already had the truck. He bought it from a Craigslist ad for $1,500 as an unassembled project, complete with multicolored body panels from several donor vehicles. The plus here was the blasted and powder-coated chassis and suspension. To make it a candidate for the LSx Shootout, Freiburger also had a modified GM Performance Parts LS6 crate engine left over from dyno testing for Hot Rod magazine. Combining…

STICK IT HERE After so much removal of turbo stuff, air-con stuff, and general engine stuff, Shawn got tired of forgetting the belt’s serpentine configuration, so he draw this Sharpie reminder. It is, like most things, Freiburger’s fault. Shawn and Sara Jones used to live a perfectly normal life as Volkswagen employees, and then Shawn saw ROADKILL. “After watching Freiburger cover Drag Week live a few years ago, I decided to look up this ROADKILL YouTube channel he kept talking about,” Shawn said. “I watched every single episode back to back.” Since that day, Shawn and Sara decided to do away with the stainless-trim and shiny-paint life and start throwing parts at an old beater to get it on the road RK style—cheap, fast, and dirty. Right around this time…

 It’s been a busy summer for ROADKILL fans. With support from Dodge, Gear Vendors, and other great brands, we’ve traveled the United States, racing and wrenching with the Roadkill Nation in six cities. We tore it up on the streets of Pontiac, Michigan, during Roadkill Nights, got to see the insides of numerous engines at Hot Rod Drag Week, and maintained our longstanding tradition of losing to you guys at our fourth ROADKILL Zip-Tie Drags in Madison, Illinois. Here are some highlights.…

After a long Hot Rod Drag Week, we turned up to Roadkill Zip-Tie Drags presented by Gear Vendors and continued our drag racing delights at Gateway Motorsports Park. FANS VS. FREIBURGER & FINNEGAN Every Zip-Tie Drags brings the opportunity for fans to race against the ROADKILL hosts in the cars they’ve seen on the show. Things got off to an inauspicious start when Finnegan attempted to run Nascarlo at the crowd’s urging against the sleepiest Chevy Vega in the world. What could possibly go wrong racing a stock-looking Vega on 13-inch wheels? Things started to add up quickly. The Vega was a sleeper street racer. The driver, Ben Stark, wore SFI gear, and when it lined up waiting for Nascarlo, there was just the briefest sound of a nitrous purge.…

There are only two things a truck needs to be able to do: get you to the site of a Craigslist lathe for purchase and take a group of women wedding dress shopping in downtown Los Angeles. No? Those aren’t your truck-buying requirements? Oh, uh, well, the 2017 Chevrolet Silverado can handle both, no problem, so do with that what you will. We hit the road early to check out a 1949 16-by-54-inch Axleson tool room lathe for sale in San Luis Obispo, about 200 miles north of L.A. The route required the usual California hill climbs, which the 5.3-liter didn’t notice. An empty truck is often a boneshaker, but even with the Z71 off-road package, the 1500 is a cushy ride. All that comfort did give us time to…

 Our boy Kevin Wesley is a pretty good shoe, and when he asked for a ROADKILL sticker to slap on the Dodge Viper ACR he was taking to Gridlife at Road Atlanta, we figured that if anyone had a chance of not failing while repping ROADKILL, it was Kevin. So we sent him a sticker and sat back to watch the action. Here’s his story: Proclaimed by the promoters to be an “experience,” Gridlife is is three days of racing, high-performance driving schools, music, camping and parties—lots of parties. There’s autocross for newbies and hardcore drifting and time attack for those of us prone to the red mist. Some of the events aren’t a full-blown festival with all the music, but the big ones draw the crowds, and we love…

A s the Mickey T’s spun in the burnout box at Gateway Motorsports Park, the Hemi in my Chevy misfired, belched smoke from both side pipes, and covered the firewall in scalding motor oil. It was Day 2 of Hot Rod Drag Week, and we were dead tired and dead broke, and we now had a dead engine. During the prelude to what should’ve been an epic quarter-mile pass down the dragstrip, the intake valve in the No. 3 cylinder broken in half and smashed against the massive domed piston. The pieces of stainless steel were sucked upward through the intake manifold by the rotors of The Blower Shop 8-71 supercharger and unceremoniously redistributed throughout the engine. The parts played pingpong inside cylinders 2, 4, 6, and 8. When the…

 The crew from Speedfreak Speed Shop showed up at the airport in Medford, Oregon, with the Harpoonigan— a 1972 AMC Javelin plucked from the Northern California weeds and off-road prepped for the 2017 Gambler 500. The Gambler is a race in about the same way the Harpoonigan was prepped for racing. You’ll understand in a minute. The car announced itself with a volley of misfires from a beleaguered 304, the exhaust huffing through rusty zoomies. The racket echoed off of the arrivals gate. With no hood, half its bodywork stripped to bare steel, and riding on meaty BFGoodrich KM2 mud terrains, it looked like a barely muzzled jackal. The Camrys and Caravans milling through the terminal gave it a wide berth. THE FLOORBOARD LOOKED LIKE A HARBOR FREIGHT HAD VOMITED…

It takes a bit of vision to see an ’80s-era Modified race car chassis next to a surface-rusted ’36 Chevy truck and imagine them meshed into a daily commuter car. Coti Sanders is nothing if not inventive. The modded Modifed started as a daily driver dilemma. You see, the young motorhead had just scored the job of his dreams, working as a master fabricator/technician for Eli English at his Traditional Speed and Custom shop in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. Excellent for Coti, but the shop was 60 miles away from his home in Waterboro, Maine. How was he going to get to work? Coti searched the local used car lots for a gas-sippin’ highway hauler—just something that could make the daily bi-state run. How about a Prius? Damn … nothing there!…

We met Brock and his co-driver, Eric Ackman, in the tech line at ROADKILL Zip-Tie Drags Gateway at Gateway Motorsports Park near St. Louis. He entered the $3,000 Hooptie Challenge—a drag race for cheap junkers—and won the whole shebang with his Barnyard Bastard 1986 Chevy Monte Carlo SS. The insane turbocharging setup not only looked hilarious, but it also propelled the cobbled-together G-body to an 11-second quarter mile and an overall win. “I loved looking at Finnegan’s face while he was looking over the car,” Brock said. “I’ve never seen him look so confused. He was making hand movements at first and just pondering it. I was thinking, ‘Oh hey, I actually got a rise out of these guys.’” Later, he admitted he didn’t really know what the car would…

My 1974 D100 Mopar Muscle Truck made its debut in episode 15 of Roadkill Garage, where this nearly completed project truck finally hit the road. The backstory on this one actually involves the tale of three similar Dodge trucks, beginning with the Bronze 1977 D100 stepside featured in ROADKILL episode 40. I’ve owned that truck since the mid-1990s, and it has been in fairly continuous use since. The drawback to that one is the model year. In California, anything newer than 1975 requires biannual smog inspection, making modification a difficult, if not illegal, pursuit. Enter the white 1972 D100 fleetside shortbed seen in the background of many episodes of Roadkill Garage and Roadkill Extra. That was built as a replacement for the original 1977 stepside solely for its smog-exempt status.…

 Working as Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of Lemons Supreme Court, I see a lot of superchargers bolted to racing hoopties and adding tremendous engine destruction power on the track. Yes, everything from an AMC Pacer with an Eaton-blown Jeep 4.0 straight-six to an ill-advised blower rig on a BMW E30 3 Series. Supercharging your street beater is an even better idea, but who wants to spend real money on such a project? ROADKILL is here to help, with a guide to the three types of blowers that are cheap and plentiful right now in North American wrecking yards. Put on your grubbies, grab your junkyard toolbox, and get ready for booooooost! Cheap Junkyard Blower Shopping I love junkyards, so I went to several in Denver and pulled one…

 We did what now? Oh yeah, we just closed a major street in the Detroit area and raced 6-second street-driven cars down it. Not really a big deal or anything. Threats of rain couldn’t keep Roadkill Nation from swarming M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan, for the third annual Roadkill Nights. For the second time, we closed Woodward and raced in the streets, but inside the venue we were having just as much fun. There were bouncy houses, thrill rides in Dodge Vipers and Hellcats, and acres of show cars, both Roadkill and resplendent. The car show portion was presented by Pioneer Car Audio—which is, BTW, the only nice part of the Muscle Truck—and the winner, Patrick Schalles, took home a $500 gift certificate for a sweet stereo with a 1970…

 Earlier this year, we asked RK Nation about their favorite non-V-8 engines on Facebook. We love V-8s with a passion, but we know you can find plenty of awesome engines with fewer than (or more than) our beloved eight jugs. We got more than 5,000 responses with suggestions. We’d love to have included everything from Geo Metro three-cylinder engines to Cummins 12-valve engines, but in the end we had to pick just a few. Don’t be mad if the Alfa Romeo “Busso” V-6, Volvo Redblock four-cylinder, Toyota 22R, Toyota 2JZ, Nissan VG and VQ V-6s, Jeep 4.0-liter inline-six, and Chrysler slant-six didn’t make the cut. We tried to pick out a few that might be unexpected. You’re still mad, we know. GM 4.3L V-6 Our readers have lots of love…

We met John Devine at one of our visits to Lincoln Tech near Chicago. He brought out his 1977 Toyota Celica GT Liftback, which is a really rare sight in the Midwest. The original California car migrated to Chicago, where John bought it in rough shape just a few hours after a late-night Craigslist crawling. It still runs the 90-horsepower 2.2-liter 20R that came in it. “I was originally planning to swap in a 1UZ-FE Toyota V-8 or do a really Roadkill-style 5.3 LS swap,” John said, “but it’s just the right amount of raunchy with the 20R built up the way it would have been back in the day.” RESCUED Determination might be defined by evacuating Florida and Hurricane Irma to road trip for a new automotive project. Carl…

Would you believe that nobody on staff had ever driven a Miata? Well, maybe Angus has, but Freiburger and Finnegan never have, and until Mazda dropped off a little red cough drop of a drop top in the driveway, I (Elana) hadn’t, either. I’ll admit, I went in sour, determined to hate it because I hate “Miata Is The Answer.” Ugh, so smug—a saying that can only have come from people who never drove anything good except the Mazda. Well dang it, Miata might not be the answer to everything, but 2017 MX-5 sure is the answer to, “How do you have a lovely weekend with some twisty roads and the Metallica Spotify station?” Boy, that car is fun. More experienced reviewers will discuss the value of the RF’s folding…

 We’re dying to visit show sponsor EBC Brakes in England. While we’ve been planning that trip, we’ve got to talk to some great British blokes, including car collector and new MTOD host Jonny Smith, who gave us our first look at American Muscle on English soil. Jonny Smith RK: How many cars do you own? JS: Currently I am on 10, I think. Chevrolet Volt is the daily hack, 2017 Merc C-Class estate (wagon) 350e hybrid, ’64 Impala SS, ’68 Charger 383 four-speed, Honda S600 Coupe, Austin Allegro, Nissan Figaro, Volvo 262C Bertone, ’67 Beetle 1500, Polski Fiat 126P. I like a bit of variety, as you might be able to tell. RK: We’ve seen your Charger, and it’s awesome. Is it hard to own American cars in England? JS:…

I’m not going to jump it,” I told Josh McGuckin as he explained the best practices for landing a slightly modified but still mostly stock VW Beetle. We were hurtling along a sandy wash in the Mojave desert. “When you’re driving off-road, you never know when you’re going to jump it,” he said. Maybe 5 miles later we were airborne, and I wished I’d paid more attention to the earlier conversation. But the bug knew the way home, and we made it back to ground and to camp in one piece. Josh was part of the Project Baja VW team, a group of friends who built a Class 11 Volkswagen for the Baja 1000 and liked it enough the first time to try it again. They were in California letting…

 It’s strange to think we used to drink beers in the back of that thing and now my kids play in there,” Anthony Daye says as he pulls a ride-on Jeep—complete with two small passengers—out of the bush they’d careened into while we’d been talking. With one eye on the boys, he glances back to the ’71 El Camino parked at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac in Orange County, California. Beside it sit a candy-corn yellow Nova with a toothless grin and a glossy black Chevelle with a Mooneyes license plate. The kids’ Jeep is the most modern vehicle in sight. “I had a ‘lawyer’s car’ for a while, an Audi A8,” he says. “It was nice for taking executives out to lunch and things like that, but I…

It is a simple formula, really—take a common American pickup truck, stuff in more power than it deserves, and have fun. Between ROADKILL and Roadkill Garage, we’ve assembled a triple play of fast haulers: the original (Chevy) Muscle Truck, the Mopar Muscle Truck (MMT), and the Ford Muscle Truck (FMT). These trucks quickly became fan favorites as a group and individually, and they continue to appear in ROADKILL-related content and at ROADKILL events. The common thread is that all are short-bed stepsides from the late ’60s to early 1970s, built for street performance and all-around vehicular mayhem. Aside of their similarities, each of these muscle trucks has its own personality with distinct differences. Each has a different story to tell, and here they are.…

The hunt was on to find a Ford truck to complete our collection of muscle trucks from the Big Three domestic manufacturers—and for a cool build for a Roadkill Garage episode. To keep the common theme, it had to be a shortbed stepside regular cab. We love the mid-’50s Ford trucks, but they cost mega bucks and don’t really fit in with the others. We also considered the earlier ’60s trucks, which are cool, but decided the 1967–1972 Ford “bumpside” had the style, and this same chassis was the basis for the later 1973–’79 “dentside” trucks. We found that only single-digit percentages of Ford truck production over these years featured the stepside (Ford technically called it “flareside”) bed, making them pretty rare. We also found that these trucks have already…

EVERYTHING ABOUT DRIVING IN DIRT WITH AWD IS COUNTERINTUITIVE. —BRAD IGER Here’s that thing we do where we learn to do a thing. Now you go do a thing.  Generally speaking, motorsport is not a pastime for the faint of wallet. But the SCCA’s RallyCross series is different. Although the concept is simple—essentially autocross on dirt—it’s one of the few racing disciplines where more money doesn’t necessarily equate to more podiums, and whether you’re a seasoned rally veteran or total newcomer, there’s an entry point into the series that’s appropriate for your driving skills and car setup. “Any road-worthy production vehicle is eligible as long as it isn’t a high rollover risk,” says Brian Harmer, the program manager for SCCA RallyCross. Jim Llewellyn, the SCCA’s communications manager, invited my wife,…

Hot Rod Drag Week is the most Roadkill event in existence. Nearly 400 very fast machines aim to prove their abilities not only on a dragstrip but also in 1,000 miles of street driving. No support trucks, no trailer rides, no excuses. Get it running, or get out of the way. At the end of the week, e.t. averages are added up, and the lowest average wins the class or the overall. Freiburger was announcing, Finnegan was racing, Elana was scoping out the carnage, and all three went straight from Drag Week to Zip-Tie Drags. It was a sleepless but glorious week.…

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SPECS 2017 Jeep Renegade Deserthawk 4x4 ENGINE: 2.4L I-4 OUTPUT: 180 horsepower, 175 lb-ft of torque TRANSMISSION: 9-speed automatic PRICE: $33,265 If the Miata was a car we wanted to dislike but couldn’t, the Renegade was one we wanted to love but don’t. Well, I wanted to love it. My husband, Tom, senior staff hater, said it looked like a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe and spent our entire trip—a 2,000-mile loop from Los Angeles to Idaho and back through Utah—complaining about its poor visibility, tiny trunk space, and underpowered 2.4-liter engine. I thought it was adorable, with its hood map graphics and some 25 or more fun Jeepy Easter eggs—the speaker grilles are Jeep grilles, there’s a little Jeep climbing the windshield edging, and there’s a nod to Fiat with…

SPECS 2017 Mercedes-Benz E400 ENGINE: 3.0L twin-turbo V-6 OUTPUT: 329 horsepower, 354 lb-ft of torque TRANSMISSION: 9-speed auto PRICE: $89,135  Wagons are coming back to America. Aficionados can now buy a VW Golf wagon, a BMW 3 Series wagon, or a wagon version of the Porsche Panamera called the Sport Turismo. Even Buick’s getting in the game with the Regal TourX, a jacked-up AWD wagon that’s kinda like a Subaru Outback only better-looking. Buick would prefer you called it an SUV, though. If you want the best wagon you can buy in the U.S. right now, write down these numbers: 603 and 3.4. The first is the number of ponies pumped out by the V-8 in the Mercedes-AMG E63 S wagon. The second is the seconds it takes this load…